Touched
by Graphospasm
Summary: A dollmaker bites off more than she can chew when she uses a bag of discarded clothing to dress her new creations. Tantei who, now? Eventual YusukexOC.
1. Chapter 1: First Contact

Touched

Chapter 01:

"First Contact"

* * *

The store smelled like it always did: like cedar, mothballs, paper, wood, and—of course—cloth. Hard wood floors polished to a high luster very nearly reflected a mirror image of underneath my short black skirt as I crossed through the front door and headed to the desk just inside it; a bell clinked above my head, and the air conditioning felt unseasonably intense when compared to the crisp autumn day outside.

"Hello?" I called over the desk, tapping the silver bell next to the old-fashioned cash register a few times. The tinny peal echoed back into the shop, back where I couldn't follow thanks to the wooden gates barring random customers from unwatched entry. Rows of old watches and rings glittered beneath the glass countertop. "Oba-san? It's me!"

I heard a thump from behind the shelves, and then Oba-san came into view. "Oh, Kiji-san," she said, sighing as she walked up on the other side of the counter. Gnarled hands patted down her knitted shawl, pearl necklace, and musty dress. "I was afraid it was one of those people from that new speakeasy down the street and hid behind a case of vases," she explained in her typically crass manner. "They keep trying to give me coupons—can you believe it, a lady like _me_ using _coupons_?"

I gave her a stern look. "First of all, you'll never get new customers with _that_ attitude, and second, you know me well enough by now to call me by my given name."

"Hina-san, then," she said with a roll of her deep-set eyes. The wrinkles around them crinkled as the old woman smiled. "I keep forgetting how many years we've known each other. You were nothing more than a spratling when you first visited."

I returned her smile as she opened one of the gates and ushered me into the store proper. "Got anything good for me?" I asked.

"Oh yes, yes," she said, guiding me into the maze of cases, racks, and displays holding a myriad of antiques. Oba-san was a high-end dealer who only carried extremely expensive and rare antiques; it was why she didn't let people past the shop's gates without her permission, supervision, and—usually—an appointment set months in advance. For me she made exceptions, though, and I visited her every other Saturday to see what she had gotten in new. We walked (well, I walked and she shuffled) past furniture, jewelry, books, vases, knick knacks, and a case of old firearms until we reached a half-circle of ancient claw-footed armoires. With a key Oba-san took from around her neck we unlocked all of them and pulled the doors open.

To say that I was assailed was an understatement; the scents of mothballs and preservatives were so strong that I had to cover my nose with my hand as I pulled a long blue dress out of the first cupboard.

"If you take off those gloves of yours," Oba-san said with calculated nonchalance, "you could feel the material. I'm sure you'd know more if you took off your gloves."

_She's more right than she knows,_ I thought as I glanced at the black leather encasing my fingers. "I told you, Oba-san," I said, keeping my voice light, "I don't like taking them off. My scars—"

"You've known me long enough to know that I wouldn't faint at the sight of them," said the tough old biddy, humphing a little in offense.

"Oh, I don't know about that," I teased, letting the blue dress drop so I could touch the sleeve of a black brocade coat. "It might be more than you can handle." It felt heavy and thick, with a delicate hemline that sat at odds with the dense cloth… I loved it immediately. "How much for this?" I asked.

She named her price. I grimaced.

"Too much for me, I'm afraid," I said, and I moved on to touch a lacy grey shawl. "And this?"

That one was more in my budget, so I placed it carefully over my arm before perusing the rest of the clothes. I found two more pieces I liked for a good price, and once I picked them out I let Oba-san lead me back to the front desk. I leaned my elbows on the counter as she rung up the price, and as I was counting out bills from my wallet I saw a shopping bag on the floor behind the counter, its warped image looking innocent and totally out of place as I caught sight of it through the two layers of the display counter's glass.

"What's in that?" I asked, jerking my chin toward the sack as Oba-san put my clothes in a linen bag.

Her sagging mouth tightened around the edges. "Someone left it in the alley behind the store," she said with pronounced distaste. "Nothing but torn clothes; stained, too."

"Mind if I take a look?" I joked, and to my surprise she actually picked the bag up and tossed its contents across the counter. I hadn't been expecting her to comply; Oba-san was particular about what she let into her store, and the finicky old woman wasn't one to let her approximation of garbage stain the immaculate interior of her store.

"See?" she said heatedly. "Trash."

I reached out to touch the yellow jacket without response, my black gloves gliding over the thick fleece interior before spreading the garment out fully. It was a plain item, a mass-produced windbreaker without much soul to set it apart, but I frowned when I saw the tear in the shoulder and the dark brown stain around it.

_Blood?_ I thought, and I set it aside.

The next garment was another jacket, a cream and black letterman that had seen enough wear and tear to merit leather patches on the elbows and some hemming on the cuffs. There was no name on the back, however, making me think it wasn't a school jacket but rather something simply modeled after one. It, like the windbreaker, was also torn, but on the side just below the wearer's ribcage. The lining was stained, also with a suspiciously bloody substance that had long since dried into a crust.

The third garment was of good quality; a name brand coat with immaculate upkeep and stunning lines. _This was expensive_, I thought as I held it up. _Raw silk, chocolate colored_… I frowned. _No, mauve. It's just so dark of a purple that it looks brown; the dye must have been—_

"That one isn't trash," Oba-san admitted, and I took a minute to slip it on over my denim jacket. It was big enough to fit with plenty of wiggle room (I'm petite, after all) and it fell to mid-calf. Belted and tailored, it wouldn't look half bad despite the size…

"I was looking for a nice trench coat," I joked, and as I held the coat open to look at the inside I saw that it was totally untouched. Mint condition, then!

I didn't take the coat off as I reached for the last object: a large ream of black cloth that had no shape to it, just two half-foot slits on either end. I wondered what it was used for until I wrapped it around my body and realized that the slits were in the perfect position for my arms to slip through. The black cloak fell to just above my ankles, and as I looked at it I felt my brow furrow.

"What is this made of, do you think?" I asked, stretching a length of the black fabric between my fists. Oba-san leaned forward, squinting through her circular glasses and down her beaked nose with both curiosity and disdain.

"Cotton or linen, surely," she sniffed.

But I shook my head. "The weave is much too dense for cotton—this is silk level weave, at least a 200-thread-count, but the cloth is much too coarse for silk." I tugged on it. "It has plenty of give but enough tensile strength to resist snagging and tears, and yet it's thick enough to be opaque, too." I let out a hoarse laugh, mostly because I was stunned and a little unsettled and I didn't quite know how to act. "I've never seen anything like it."

She shrugged. "A new blend, then? Rayon and cotton and silk all at once?"

"Maybe." I didn't really believe that, but whatever. "I'll look it up when I get home," I said as I stripped off the cloak and the trench coat and began to fold them. When I was through I put them back in the bag, folded the other coats, and handed them all to Oba-san.

She shoved the bag back at me. "Keep them. I'd just throw them away anyway."

My jaw dropped. "But one of these is a designer label!" I protested.

The woman snorted. "I only deal in designers that are at least as old as I am. That trench is much too young for me. So keep it!" She pinned me with her best glare when I began to talk back. "Really, Hina-chan. Keep it."

I couldn't help but glow. "Thank you, Oba-san!" I said, bowing low from the waist to show my gratitude. "You have been so generous to me!"

"You're my best customer," she sniffed, and then her look turned sly. "Make me a doll for my granddaughter and you can call us even."

I suppressed a grin. "Sneaky, Oba-san."

She waved her hand, shooing me out of the store. "Sneakiness is a part of business, that's all!"

"Yeah, yeah—see you next week!" I said, clutching my finds to my chest as I gave her another bow, and then I trotted off for home.

* * *

Mother was waiting for me at the door. When she saw the bags in my hands, her happy expression crumpled into sourness. "Did you really need to buy more for that little hobby of yours?" she asked, lips rising above her straight teeth. "Wasting your allowance is—"

I let her finish her usual lecture—spend less time on hobbies and more time on school; I'm not paying for your education so you can goof off; college is important; entrance exams are soon—before timidly saying: "My last sale paid for this, actually. I spent my allowance on a new textbook, for cram school."

Her look cleared immediately. "Oh. Well, I suppose that's a good a use as any." She turned away and started to head deeper into our house. "Dinner will be ready soon."

"I'll be in my room until then," I said, and I headed up the stairs at a jog. When I reached my room at the top of the stairs—the only upstairs room in our otherwise small home—I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, breathing slow through my nose and fast out my mouth as I tried to calm myself. Even short exchanges with Mother were becoming frustrating these days.

Once calm, I walked into my room and stood in the middle of it, reveling in the familiarity and comfort of the space. There was my small bed in one corner, my school desk in another, and my other desk—the one I used to pursue my 'stupid hobby'—in the third. But it was to the fourth corner I walked right then, the one that held the mannequin specifically tailored to my body shape and the armoire that held all my clothes-making paraphernalia.

I don't wear clothes from the store. All of mine are made by hand, with the fabrics I choose and with all of the uniqueness my fingers can translate into lines of fabric and the drape of cloth on skin. I don't use patterns because I have long since become good enough with a needle and thread to draw them up myself; all my designs are personal and original and unseen anywhere but on me.

Seamstressing, however, is not my passion.

The dolls lining the shelves hung over every available foot of wall space attest to my true love.

The mauve trench coat from Oba-san's mystery bag looked comically huge on my personal mannequin, hem falling to puddle on the floor as the sleeves very much eclipsed my mannequin's detachable arms. I pinned the garment up appropriately with some silver-headed needles and took it in at the waist and shoulders; working wiped all the stress and worries from my mind, and it wasn't until the coat was completely tailored to my body shape that I stood back, looked at my efforts, and remarked to my glass-eyed audience: "Not too shabby, even for a stupid store-bought."

The dolls stared back, some of them smiling and some of them staring without expression. All of them, however, were beautiful, and I crossed to touch one of my favorites—a young girl with rosy cheeks, blue eyes, and porcelain skin dressed in Victorian fashion I had sewed myself—on her cool hand.

"Maybe I'll make you another dress?" I said lightly, touching her curls with my gloved fingers. "Or a new wig—how would you like that?"

"Talking to your dolls again?"

I jumped when Mother opened the door and stepped inside, arms folded over her chest as she looked at the two hundred or so creations on the shelves. My hand jerked back on reflex, joining my other hand as they wrung together just below my ribs. I tended to wring my hands in that position when I was nervous.

"It's creepy to hear you talk to them," she said sullenly, and shivered. "How can you sleep when they all _stare_ like that?"

"Well, I made them all," I said, smiling with a large amount of hesitance. "I look at them as my… my children?"

Mother rolled her eyes as she turned away. "Just be ready to put 'your children' away when you go off to college in the spring," she said.

"But—" I blurted, and I bit the words back when Mother shot me a look that said _go on, I _dare_ you to keep speaking_, but speak I did because for once I felt a little bit of courage loosen up my otherwise quiet tongue.

"But Mother," I said, keeping my head down so I didn't seem confrontational. "My dolls, they're selling really well. My last one paid for the costs of, of at least three new ones, ones that will be even better and be worth a lot more." I rolled my lips together as I nervously met her incredulous eyes. "Given how much I can make on them, I think I could put myself through school with the money. If I keep making dolls—"

"It's a child's hobby and you're not a child anymore," she said without a single ounce of pity. "I shouldn't have ever encouraged it in the first place. It's the worst parenting mistake I ever made."

Tears pricked my eyes in a rush of painful salt, but Mother saw them and scowled. She hated tears almost as much as she hated my dolls.

"Put your dolls away and forget about them," she said. Again she turned toward the door and the stairs beyond it, but this time her look softened as she addressed me over her shoulder. "I'm only looking out for your best interests, Hina," she said, smiling a little with narrow brown eyes. I had her auburn hair and rounded chin, but I had Dad's wide black eyes and button nose. "Trust me. Nothing good can ever come from following your dreams. Being practical—that's what'll get you far in life."

My throat felt thick when I said: "Yes ma'am."

"Dinner will be done in a few minutes," she said.

I let the tears fall when she shut the door behind her, but quietly.

In my house, all I could do was keep quiet.

* * *

We ate dinner in silence until Mother started talking about the person who kept stealing her lunch at work, and how she had swapped her normal chicken salad sandwich for one filled with catfood.

"The jerk took the bait," she said with glee as I washed dishes, "and it serves 'em right!"

"Is catfood bad for you?" I said to myself, eyebrows knitting together as I thought about how sick the person must be feeling. I felt sorry for them; maybe they stole lunches because they couldn't afford one of their own. Maybe they were a really low ranking worker—lower than Mother, even—and…

"The badder the better," Mother quipped, and I excused myself and went back to my room.

I had done my homework before I visited Oba-san's shop, and since I had finished tailoring the trench coat I decided to do a more thorough investigation of the other pieces. I sat at my hobby desk—the one that had drawers full of tubs of spare doll parts according to size and type, jars of paints and brushes, and much more—and spread the yellow windbreaker out across the paint and glue stained table. I flipped on my desk lamp so I could see it better, too, and I lifted the ripped shoulder to my nose and tentatively inhaled.

_Copper, salt… definitely blood,_ I thought as I looked at the dark stain. My stomach lurched. _What if these are murder clues or something? What if I'm helping the killer—_

I glanced at the trench coat on my mannequin.

—_what if I'm helping my exceptionally well-dressed killer get away with his crimes?_

My natural curiosity, of course, made more prudent thinking…. Well, boring. I took out the letterman and examined its rip as well, once again ascertaining that the material on the side was bloodstained.

Then I took out the mysterious black fabric.

_What the heck _is_ this?_ I thought as I ran it between my leathered fingers. _Too coarse for silk, too fine for cotton, much too durable to be rayon… _I glanced at my study desk and the laptop sitting on it_. Maybe a Google search would help?_

A twenty-minute search didn't do me any good, however, so I just made due with writing out a question on my favorite dollmaker's forum, where I was pretty popular and had enough friends to know I'd get a quick response.

_Someone should know,_ I thought as I powered down my laptop and headed back to my hobby desk. I picked the cloak up and looked at it for a long time. It was thick enough to be totally opaque, but it was also light, airy, and breathable. Despite how much I knew about cloth, this piece challenged my perceptions completely.

"It looks soft," I mused, and I quickly shut my mouth before looking at my dolls. "I really, really want to touch this," I told them softly.

Was it just me, or did their eyes seem a bit… encouraging?

"Well, if you guys _really_ want me to," I said, sighing, and I laid the black fabric out across my bed. I glanced at my curtained windows (closed, thankfully) before walking to my door and locking it. Then I leaned on the door and stared at the black cloth, breathing deep as I held my hands out in front of me and slowly—excruciatingly slowly—began to peel off my gloves.

What I had said to Oba-san about my scars was true, of course. I had them. They were brutal. Whorls and lines of burned flesh made my skin look perpetually gnarled and aflame, like burning tree bark that had never quite cooled. They didn't hurt anymore, of course, but looking at those dark pink stains still made me wince because the emotional pain connected with the scars—the scars that covered the backs of my hands like a second, scaly skin and spilled onto the backs of my wrists—was more intense than the months of therapy required to heal the flesh itself. Time had been able to dull that pain until it was bearable, but neither Mother nor I could stand the sight of my burned flesh for too long.

But none of that was what _really_ prompted me to wear those gloves. Not even Mother knew the true reason.

I tried not to look at my hands as I crossed to the bed, staring at the black fabric like it would tell me not to do this, to reconsider, _don't do it, Hina!_ But it said nothing; it said even less than my dolls considering how I didn't know anything about its true nature and I knew the dolls inside and out.

I took a deep breath before holding out my hands and turning them so my palms faced the ceiling.

My palms were unmarked. The burns stopped short on the tops of my fingers and the backs of my hands.

"Please don't be a murderer," I whispered to the cloth, and before I could lose my nerve I flipped my hands back over and slapped them sharply atop the mound of fabric.

My world went black, the cloth seeming to surge upward to coat the room from floor to ceiling, and then out of the blackness came a rushing glow of scarlet and violet, two points below and one point above: a triangle with a base of fire and a crown of night. The lights coalesced into eyes a second later, ones that winged upward to the man's temples and stared, stared, _stared_ into my own like they could see to the very chasm of my soul. A small nose and small lips and a strong jaw joined the eyes in a burst, and then skin crept out of the dark and covered the delicate bones that didn't match the utter ferocity boiling in the depths of those red eyes.

I think I cried out when black hair crested his head, and then white streaks swam out of the dark as I saw strong bones bleach out the blackness like macabre candles. Muscle came next, lithe muscles that seemed as hard as diamond—it formed with proportions that were as perfect as they were frightening, skin whispering over each dip and plain in a tanned wave, and then his strong hands came into being and from the back of his right sprouted a black shape, one that writhed and burst from his skin before clinging to it in a spiral that was clearly a tattoo, one of a black Chinese dragon that caressed his wrist and arm and hand like a lover. Scars erupted all over him next; my eye caught on a particularly ropey line crossing his left arm halfway between the elbow and wrist and another just below his ribs. Many more small lines crisscrossed him like an insane surgeon's handiwork, evidence of his long, hard life and the horrors he had seen during it…

And yet his face was just so _young_ despite the scars, the glare, the muscle…

I know I cried out when a small pinpoint of pale blue light surged into being in the center of his chest. Two brown lines flowed upward from the jewel, showing me a vision of a circular pendant hanging from a leather chord that was quickly covered by the existence of his clothing: black pants, black boots, a white scarf, and that unmistakable black cloak that was as mysterious as it was suitable for those eyes, that hair, that warrior's body, and the bandages that snaked around to cover the jagged black tattoo on his skin…

As soon as the vision crystallized into a picture so sharp it could cut, I began to fade. I was vaguely aware of my body as it fell to its knees and lost grip on the cloak; I toppled sideways, that face hovering before my eyes as my mind began to drift into a buzzing haze, and I lost consciousness.

From the dark of my dreams, a harsh voice whispered: _Hiei._

* * *

I was lucky that the next day was Sunday, because when I woke up it was about four in the morning and I felt exhausted. My gloves were still off and the black cloak was still on my bed, but instead of thinking about what the _hell_ had happened a few hours before I just walked over to the coat hanging on my mannequin and buried my hands in the mauve silk.

Green eyes brighter than any gem I had ever seen popped into being, stinging and soothing all at once as I fell to my knees beneath their power. But these eyes, unlike Hiei's, were as soothing as a mountain stream and as open as a book. They bore me up and gave me strength as they softened, full lips smiling into existence as his—yes, _his_ despite the crippling beauty—pointed chin drove a knife into my heart. He looked like a living doll with his straight nose and perfect porcelain skin and high cheekbones, those full lips and those sinfully wide eyes that reflected more wisdom and experience than their youth proclaimed. Old eyes, ancient eyes—those eyes could see the things my own limited scope couldn't even begin to imagine.

Red hair flowed from a milky pale scalp to brush strong shoulders. Bones flew out of the dark and formed a tall, lean body that soon coated itself in ripe muscle, more porcelain skin, and few scars—surely with those eyes, though, he had scars.

Didn't he?

_Yes,_ a voice whispered, _there are scars._

His hands were calloused but beautiful, lean and long and strong as they hung ready at his sides. Clothes creeped upon his perfect, capable, and beautiful body until I saw a mauve silk trench coat over a crisp white shirt, black pants of excellent fit, and shined black shoes. He was a fashionable vision, a man among men most likely envied by all for his heart stopping face and kind demeanor.

And then behind the green eyed man's back there came a new shape, a taller man with eyes that knew even more than the green ones did. Their gold color was as cold as a knife in winter as the bones and muscle shaped him from nothing and into fullness, and strands of purest silver burst from his head like the birth of a thousand stars. Ears more fitting on a cat twitched amid the hair, and then that silver hair clouded around the green eyed, redheaded man until the pair of them seemed inseparably intertwined.

_We,_ said a pair of thrumming voices, _are Kurama._

* * *

The letterman came next, and I saw his bones form first. He was a big man, one with wide shoulders and narrow hips and hands and feet so large it was a wonder he didn't look clumsy as he stood before me, hardly formed but more real than either of the fantastically unbelievable other two. Something about this one spoke to me before I even saw his face; maybe he was just more plausible, given the imperfections that made him so very, very human and so very, very much like me.

Then muscle padded him like a tank, making his biceps bulge and his chest ripple in ways neither Hiei nor Kurama could match.

_I,_ his body seemed to say, _am strong._ _Strength is my maker and I will keep you safe. I swear that._

His face came into being after his body and his bones, all hard lines and harsh angles that showed earnestness, kindness, and a cultivated bravado that covered it all with shouted challenges and protests. Rusty hair crowned his brow in a style suited to a common street thug, but his thin lips easily gave way to smiles and his narrow black eyes glittered with ill-concealed good humor. I could see so much bravery there, so much selflessness, and a desire for friendship I was not used to having aimed in my direction.

_Acceptance,_ his plain—plain but perfect in its own way—face seemed to scream. _I will accept you whether you want me to or not, and my name is Kuwabara Kazuma._

* * *

I did not faint after meeting Kurama or Kuwabara, and even though the effort of 'seeing' them made my knees turn to water and my shoulders turn to tense concrete, I touched the yellow windbreaker because I felt it must be done.

He was smaller than Kurama and bigger than Hiei, with a wiry build that looked like it could run a mile in a minute and yet smash a hole in a brick wall, too. His bones thrashed with pent-up energy, twitching and moving even as they lay free of muscle or skin or other trappings. When they did coat themselves in muscle that rippled and surged like a lashing ocean tide, the image of this boy fair danced in my mind's eye, leaping with a joy in movement the others did not possess. He wanted to run and jump and leap and fight—he was a fighter through and through, I realized, with knuckle bones worn down from thousands of punches and heels ground smooth from kicks.

Unlike the others, his face appeared with a grin and a twinkle in the eye, sizing me up even as he tried to back me down with playfully insidious glee. Those wide brown eyes were almost innocent, in a way, possessing a purity that I was sure came from a wholehearted love of something he could never articulate aloud. He wore his coal-dark hair like a punk and swaggered like a gangster, but there was no evil in him despite the feral grin.

Just… odd innocence. A dark love. An enraptured punch.

_Damn right,_ he told me as his face faded. _I'm Urameshi Yusuke!_

* * *

I _did_ pass out after meeting Yusuke. I woke up sitting at my desk, hands in my lap with the windbreaker lying sprawled across my work table, and when I pushed my hair out of my face and felt the soft strands twine through my fingers—well, everything hit me with a flash and I scrambled for my gloves, tugging them on until I felt safe, warm, and secure within their false skin. I sat on the floor with my knees pulled to my chest, wondering who those boys—Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, and Kazuma—were supposed to be. None of them felt real, really: or maybe they were _too_ real, so real it made me feel two-dimensional, and maybe my mind rejected that and labeled them as fictional as a means to cope with feeling like a background character in my own life story.

But they _weren't_ fictional.

My hands never lied.

"Oh boy," I murmured, lying back on the carpet to stare at the water-stained ceiling. "Oh, oh boy."

Not quite knowing what I was supposed to do after that, I just got up and packed all of the clothes back into their bag and shoved them into the recesses of my closet. Then I sat at my desk and pulled out a box of ball-joint doll torsos and heads, fitting them idly together as I mulled over what I'd learned from the mystery garments. Joints snapped into place beneath my fingers, a medium-sized male torso sprouting legs and arms and hands and a head before I even noticed how fervently I was working.

When I realized that what I'd been working on was almost complete, I looked down at my handiwork. My eyes widened when I saw it, and then my hands began to shake. I dropped the doll's unfinished body to the desk and pushed away from it, staring down at my creation like it was about to bite me.

Proportionally speaking, the doll I had begun to make looked an awful lot like Yusuke.

* * *

_NOTES:_

_I realize that starting yet another story probably isn't a good idea, but I was looking at Airpwane's deviantART account last night and had a MAJOR BURST of inspiration. She has a doll that looks like Yoko Kurama's OC sister, you see, and for some reason I just started getting these ideas for a story, and… Well, this story popped into being in about five seconds. The main OC, the plot, everything. It just… was. And I felt like if I didn't write it all down, I'd lose it. So: THANKS, AIRPWANE, for the inspiration!_

_Luckily for me I'm on a break from school until January, so I think I'll be able to update pretty much all of the stories I've started over the next few weeks, this one included. YAY!_

_Hina has a back story explaining her burns and her psychic "touch-know" abilities, which we will eventually learn more of. It ties directly in to her hobby as a dollmaker, actually, so even that will get some explaining soon. ^^_

_Anyway, thanks for putting up with my craziness and weird ideas. I appreciate it, and thanks so much for reading! We see more of the actual plot next chapter and the dolls are at the center of it. The boys, as you may imagine, are not going to like what I have planned for them one bit…_

_Hina's name, for the record, means "doll," and her last name ("Kiji") means "cloth." The fact that she shares her name with Hiei's mother will not be overlooked. ^^_


	2. Chapter 2: The Making

Touched

Chapter 02:

"The Making"

* * *

I didn't plan on actually making dolls of Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, and Hiei, of course. Even someone as socially inept as me didn't think that was normal, that doing something so, so _stalkerish_ wouldn't be looked at as creepy, or awkward, or strange if I got caught, especially by the boys who inspired the dolls in the first place. It's just that every time I sat down at my desk over the course of the next week and a half, I found myself with gloves wrapped around pieces of ball-joint dolls, fingers fitting together bodies that matched the proportions of Yusuke, or Kuwabara, or Kurama, or Hiei without my conscious thoughts doing anything to guide them.

When my conscious thoughts actually _did_ decide to guide my hands into making the boys into dolls, a decision that I came to only when I realized that resistance was futile—oh, it wasn't as easy as fitting joints together, painting faces, and dressing them. I wanted more than a mere facsimile of a doll. I wanted heart, I wanted essence, I wanted soul, I wanted everything a doll modeled after a certain person has trouble being.

Portraits are the curse of the dollmaker; they are a goal so close you can taste them, but they are a goal that remains maddeningly out of reach.

Still, I tried, and I'd like to think I succeeded. I got on my favorite forums and asked around after the best ways to make a doll with a life-like rendering of a specific human's face, and after many naysayings (_it won't work; just paint the face as best you can_) suggestions that I didn't know if I could bring to life (_mold_ _their heads out of glass and fire them, then paint them_) and suggestions that, frankly, were the work of trolls (_cut off the person's head and shrink it,_ was one of the more colorful ones), someone provided me a link to a website I had never heard of.

The business had, apparently, been open for only a few months, but after carefully reading through the processes used to make the horrendously-expensive, unpainted doll heads and seeing the seven glowing product reviews (one of which was from Matel Toys, of all the reputable sources in the world), I determined that I was willing to risk using them on my Yusuke-Kuwabara-Kurama-Hiei project.

Their process, for the record, was a simple, effective, and involved one. To create the sculpture, one needed to provide photographs of the person you wished to emulate from a series of angles: straight-on, in profile, from above, from below, three-quarter left, and three-quarter right. You also needed to provide detail shots of all their features, several shots of the subject wearing different expressions, and if it was possible, they wanted measurements in centimeters of the face, jaw, and skull for facial proportions. You were to also provide the subject's height and weight so they could size the head appropriately.

Once all of the required information was submitted, it was fed into a database and rendered into a digital 3D model of the final product. From there a machine could form and cast the doll's head. If your information was cohesive and if your pictures were clear and your measurements accurate, the final product would bear a remarkable resemblance to the subject in question. They had trouble capturing things like wrinkles and colors, which is why the heads were delivered unpainted so you could do the face-ups yourself, but the bone structure and face shape was just about perfect.

I did not, of course, have photographs of my subjects. I emailed the manufacturer and asked if clear, precise sketches would be enough to make my doll's head, and I attached a few images of Hiei to showcase my skill as a sketch artist.

Not that I'm really that much of a sketch artist, mind you. It's just that the faces of Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, and Kuwabara were so ingrained on my brain that it would have been more surprising if I _couldn't_ draw them accurately.

At any rate, after reading my email (in which I provided a list of some of the people who had bought my dolls, because I figured that the company wouldn't get back to a person who was a nobody, even though my name is fairly well-known among dollmaking circles) and seeing my arsenal of sketch work, the woman in charge of sales OK-ed my work for rendering. Ecstatic, I sent in all of the required sketches of the boys, plus a few others I felt might help the process. I was able to provide their measurements fairly well, because after years of making my own clothes I've become a good judge of minute distances, and she told me to allow three weeks for delivery.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Why didn't you send in _one_ of the boy's sketches, wait to see how it came out, _then_ send the others in? Because the process could fail utterly, and if that's the case then you wasted your money!

The answer, you see, is a simple beast: I was just too excited to wait.

I did not sit idly around while their heads came in, of course. I actually let my hands do what they'd been wanting to do all along, allowing them to fit ball-joints together until I had four perfect, naked bodies lying on my desk, each one mirroring the form of one of the four boys living in my head. The smallest, slightest body was Hiei; the largest one, the one with the ridiculously broad shoulders and narrow hips, was Kuwabara, and the two between were lean and slight and belonged to Kurama and Yusuke.

After the principle four, I made a fifth doll without really meaning to, and it took a day of deep thought to realize that the mysterious fifth's body mimicked the wider, stronger, and more sinister proportions of the silver-haired, golden-eyed man who stood behind Kurama.

Yoko_ Kurama, not just Kurama_, I thought while I stared at it lying half-formed in my hands, and I jumped a little. The words had flowed into my head without my bidding, and then: _And the red, that's… Shuichi-Kurama. The two are one and the same, but separate._

My stomach twisted. Palms felt damp inside my gloves.

_But how do I know that?_

For those who are interested, Yoko Kurama didn't require a special head. He had the same wide, calculating eyes as a spare gothic doll of mine possessed, and I dismantled that head and fitted it—no, _him_, now—with silver hair the day before the other heads came in.

* * *

The bodies, finished weeks before the heads arrived, couldn't have been better, and I made their clothes before I ever saw the heads, too.

I made their clothes by hand, pants and shirts and all, and I made small versions of their jackets out of the jackets themselves, tearing cloth from the lining so I wouldn't damage the original items too much—after all, if the real boys came looking for their coats, I didn't want to have torn them all to pieces.

Kurama's coat was the only exception, as I still took the time to tailor it down to my size.

Anyway, I dressed them in the outfits I had seen in my dreams: jeans on Yusuke, with a white t-shirt beneath his windbreaker, and tennis shoes. I slipped a pair of miniature reflective sunglasses into his coat pocket; they suited him. Kuwabara wore jeans and a t-shirt as well, but his letterman made him look more put-together than Yusuke and his sneakers were newer, too. Shuichi-Kurama wore a crisp white dress shirt and black slacks, with shined shoes and a tie to hold back his riotous hair. Yoko wore a simple white tunic.

Hiei was the only one whose clothes posed a small amount of difficulty. His cloak resisted being cut until I went out and bought a pair of industrial shears, the kind guaranteed to cut through anything, and even those looked remarkably dull after I tore through a strip of the cloak's fabric and poked simple arm-holes on either end. I made Hiei's under clothes—black pants and a ratty shirt with no sleeves—out of different fabric to save myself the trouble of ruining more shears.

* * *

An email saying that my package was on its way made my entire day a study in tension, anticipation, and sweet, sweet longing. I watched for the mailman from my window, and when I saw him walking down the street I quietly padded down the stairs, slipped out the front door, and signed for the box with my name on it. Mother intercepted me as I tried carrying the package inside, wondering why I had gone out and popped back in at random, but I managed to distract her with news of a good test score long enough to put the cardboard box behind my back. She was on her day's lunch break, luckily enough, and was just on her way out, so she didn't have time to be suspicious and told me she'd be home by ten, "so order some pizza for dinner, OK?"

I told her that I would, and since I didn't have cram school that day I was able to run up to my room, shut the door, and lock myself and my pounding heart inside. I made sure to watch Mother walk down the street and vanish around the corner before I sat down at my doll desk, hands trembling as I took an exacto knife from a drawer and slowly slit the tape holding the box closed. Packing peanuts fell to the desk and floor like snow as I plunged my hands inside, and from the white mass I pulled a small wooden box. A metal clasp on the front clinked when I thumbed it open, and when I saw the head lying on the plush red velvet interior, I couldn't help but gasp and stare.

An undeniably _Yusuke_ pair of eyes looked up at me, a smile ghosting at the corners of his white mouth. His jaw was perfect, ears just the right size, eyes wide and shaped just _so_ and small nose exactly how I remembered it. I held the head up and turned it over and over in my hands, marveling at how much like Yusuke it looked. They'd somehow managed to capture his barely-contained energy in the lines and flow of his unseen bones, and even though the head lacked hair there was no way to mistake him for any of the others.

I put him back, a smile breaking across my lips as I found another box and opened it. There, face patient and serene, was Kurama with his wide eyes, high cheekbones, and pointed chin. Next came Hiei; somehow they had managed to capture his grumpy scowl, watching eyes, and suspicious brow, much to my delight, and Kuwabara looked as much like Kuwabara as the real man did. The tough-guy expression couldn't hide the smile and cheer beneath, and I found myself grinning at his hidden optimism in spite of myself.

"You're perfect," I whispered, and then my voice gained strength. "You are all _perfect_."

I put the heads in their boxes, breathing deep through my nose and out through my mouth, and then I scraped all of the fallen packing peanuts back into the cardboard box.

"I'll make you the best clothes and hair and face-ups _ever_," I promised the heads, who lay in their protective boxes and out of sight. "You deserve the best, and that's what I'll give you."

I found the note just before I tossed the cardboard box in the garbage.

"_Though sketches don't normally work well in our process,"_ the hand-penned letters said, _"yours seemed to lend the finished products lives of their own. These truly are exceptional products, even by our standards. Though this is irregular of us to ask, would you mind if we kept your name on file as a business and customer reference? We would love to work with you again, just as we would love to see the projects our merchandise will complete."_

The note was signed with the company's founder's name, plus a phone number and extension.

I swallowed, nervous at the suggestion of sending in pictures of the finished dolls. What if Hiei, or Kurama, or Yusuke, or Kuwabara got hold of the images somehow, and found me out? Wouldn't publicizing my creations be a risk of exposure? Wouldn't it be—

I pushed the thoughts aside as I put the note into a drawer at my doll desk, and then I took another quick look at the heads.

"Perfect," I couldn't help but murmur. "These will be perfect. I'll deal with the consequences later."

* * *

The art of giving a doll rosy cheeks, colored lips, warm skin, and depth around the eyes, nose, and mouth is called a "face up." There are companies dedicated to giving dolls face-ups with paints and airbrushes, ones that do excellent jobs and make dolls look like real people instead of mindless mannequins, but I prefer to do the face ups myself. Giving dolls expression links me to them on a personal level, allowing me to see the soul of the doll and the true heart lying behind its face.

I believe handmade dolls, no matter how simple, all possess a soul, of sorts, imbued by the attention and love of their creator.

At any rate, I pulled out my paints, my brushes, and the heads after taking a series of deep, cleansing breaths. I needed to be centered and focused during a face-up, because botching the job was _not_ an option.

I started with Kuwabara and his normal, comforting features, because I figured he would prove the easiest to make. I painted in his dark pupils and irises with a brush no thicker than a needle, lashing his eyes with minute strokes of pale brown before doing the same to his eyebrows. I added skin tone to his face, blending it in on his cheeks, nose, forehead, and chin before coming in was a darker shade and shading beneath his hollow cheeks, in the crevice around his nose, and in the corners of his mouth. His thin, easily-happy lips I shaded just a little bit, and before I knew it his face was perfect, was Kuwabara, was _him_. I gave him hair after that, adhesive holding the mini-wig in place so I could style it with gel the real thing doubtless used himself.

He was, in short, authentic.

I went for Kurama next; I'm not sure why. I had to use an airbrush for his flawlessly perfect skin, and once I gave him flesh tone and sufficient color in the cheeks I painted his mouth, then his eyebrows, then his lashes (they were black instead of red, to my delight, but he didn't appear too feminine despite their thickness). The green of his irises took considerable planning, and in the end I chose to use a basic green color with a glaze of iridescent film over it, to show their depth and ability to flash, to see into the unseen, and to miss nothing. His hair was as simple as attaching a long red wig, then layering it with minute scissors.

To my surprise, he was easier to make than Kuwabara. Perhaps the ordinariness I had counted on was that much more difficult to grasp.

Hiei came next, with his tanned skin (airbrushed, then blended by hand to show his toil-roughened past) and his scowling mouth, and his small nose, and his high cheeks, and his pointed chin. His hair was more difficult than I had anticipated; I ruined more than one tiny, midnight-blue wig trying to mimic his spikes, spikes which struck me as an impossibility of physics.

"You must have the coarsest hair in the entire _world_, Hiei!" I caught myself muttering more than once, but in the end I managed, with a creative use of spirit gum and glue, to get his hair to stand up straight. I ended up shading some of his hair with black dye to get the desired gradient effect, and I painted the white streaks in with a small brush and paint ("Where does he get his hair done?" I wondered, looking at it. Surely it could not be natural!)

Then again, the third eye in the center of his forehead couldn't be natural, either, right?

I hadn't included it in the sketches (too many questions from the company, I thought), so I had to paint it on myself. I used purple and silver paints, mixed, and I did not lash it because it was not, I felt, appropriate. But I did lash the red eyes, and I did paint them despite their unnatural color, and Hiei, for some inexplicable reason, was finished in all of an hour. Maybe it was because he was like some weird cartoon character, so strange, so outside of the realm of possibility that he was easy to not mess up, to not confuse with the myriad of brown eyes, black haired men I'd ever made dolls of…

Maybe that's why, then, Yusuke was the most difficult doll of all.

I don't know how I managed to get the sparkle in his eyes, but I do know that I had to practice on a paper towel at least a dozen times before trying to put the face on the real thing. Even then I had to frantically wipe the paint clean and start over at least twice, and his mouth—I overpainted it more than once; he looked like a kissy-faced girl! I succeeded in making Yusuke into Yusuke in the end, though, and after letting the paint on his face dry I styled his hair and attached it, and when it was through I had Yusuke staring up at me with a grin and a face that said "Hey, don't worry about the mess-ups, you're awesome!"

I didn't know, as I stared at the heads, if I quite believed him, but he was right about one thing—the dolls were the most beautiful, original, and well-crafted creations I had ever made.

They were my masterworks.

And as I slowly—one by one and with all the love and pride in my artist's heart—fitted the heads onto their bare necks with minute and final 'click's, I knew that I had stumbled onto something good.

* * *

The paint on my dolls' faces had barely dried when Mother came home. I had forgotten to order the pizza, as busy as I was with bringing my dreams to life, and I was in the middle of staring at the dolls (they were lying on their backs in a row on my desk; I hadn't touched any of them after putting the heads on, too exhausted and giddy to do more than bask in their presence) when her voice echoed up the stairs with the words: "Where the hell's dinner, Hina?"

She didn't mean it in a cruel way—she had had a long day at work, it was late, almost midnight, and she was tired, etcetera—but I flinched regardless.

"Sorry, I fell asleep!" I called back, hastily rising to my feet as I grabbed my room's extension of the house phone out of its cradle. "I'll order it now!"

"Sleeping?" I heard her call. "Sleeping? You were _sleeping_? Why weren't you studying?" To my horror, feet started pounding up the stairs. "I pay good money for you to go to that cram school after you choked up, _choked fucking up_, on those entrance exams and I—"

I didn't listen to the rest of her tirade. My maternal—nay, my _creator's_ instincts were screaming at me to _hide the dolls, hide them so the beast who doesn't understand won't take them away from you, ACT NOW, HINA!_

And I listened to that voice. My gloved hand dropped the phone and scooped up the dolls, more roughly than I would have liked but I'd cry over it later, and my other hand yanked open a drawer and set the dolls upright in a cluster between a box full of spare torsos and a stack of old manga books. I wheeled around and shut the drawer with my foot once the boys were safe, spinning to face the door the instant before Mother opened it with a shaking hand and flashing eyes.

"Did you hear what I said?" she said, voice lowered into a barely-contained whisper.

"Yes ma'am," I managed, faltering in the wake of her narrowed black eyes and tumbled hair. My heart beat in my lips and chest, blood pumping into every nook and cranny of my body as adrenaline sent my pulse into overdrive—

She tossed something at me, something I barely managed to catch, and it turned out to be a wallet.

"Go get food, Hina, and make it quick," she growled, and she turned away. "I have a headache."

As soon as she was gone, I checked on the dolls. They were fine, standing upright between the box and the books like they were discussing something important, and once I saw that none of them had been damaged I shut the drawer again.

Then I left.

Mother isn't happy when she's hungry.

* * *

_NOTES:_

_(*deep breaths*) I am sure some of you noticed the change I made in this story's summary, and the fact that this has been labeled a "YusukexOC" story. This is true. This is likely going to alienate some of you, but that's a risk I'm willing to take._

_Explanation: I feel like I need to challenge myself. _

_I've written many HieixOC fics. I'm comfy with writing Hiei. And Kurama, well, I think I'm comfy with him, too. Even Kuwabara has an OC fic based on him, as does Koenma (to a degree)._

_All I'm missing is the heart and soul of YYH: Yusuke, the one character I feel like I have trouble writing above all others._

_Thus, the challenge has been born._

_But here's my pledge: I will NOT ignore Keiko. I will NOT take the easy way out. I will NOT write her out of the manga. I will NOT breach established canon._

_This story takes place four years after the series ends, with Yusuke and Kuwabara at age 22 and Kurama at age 23. Keiko and Yusuke ARE TOGETHER at this point. Hina will not become some sort of man-stealing "other woman." Her relationship with Yusuke will not be a magical thing, but rather one born from hardship, unrequited feelings, and pain._

_A lot of pain._

_I don't think I have ever had to write a story quite like what I have in mind for this one._

_So please, bear with me. Trust me. Have faith. This fic is a challenge, a bigger challenge than any other fic I've written, and I hope I can make it work._

_Hina is my first OC with a parent who isn't nice, or understanding, or at least pitiable. But you have to understand that her mother is a single woman raising a daughter who, as it appears in the mother's eyes, isn't going anywhere. The mother is afraid of this because, in Hina, she sees a reflection of herself. So please don't judge Hina's mother too harshly. She's just lonely, scared, and unable to keep herself in check. I'll touch more on why she's such a bitch later, though, because there are VERY CLEAR reasons. They have to do with Hina's scars. You'll seeeee…_

_Also: I have no idea if such a method for making doll heads exists, but I thought it out fairly well and think it sounds plausible. One of my friends, I learned when I vented to her about this story, has some experience making dolls, and she' the one who told me that it's really hard to make a doll look like a specific person. Anyone know if that's right? I'd like to make this as authentic as possible!_

_THANK YOU SO MUCH, REVIEWERS! You are all awesome to give this fledgling story such kindness, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so nice to me even though I don't deserve it. DevilAngelWolf27, Reclun, Kaijin-san, LadyoftheGags, XxXTwilightSinXxX, Out-Of-Control-Authoress, Miyakomono, Zetsubel, AkaMizu-chan, itsallaboutbob, HeeHeeHee01, DoilyRox, SillyGoddessDisco, Mihakuu, Pirazz, loser94, etowa-ru, MissNayru, DragonDancer93, Dreamehz, Foxgirl Ray, Panda-chan31, chocolateluvr13, Montblanco, Willowleaf2560, Lizzie-Lizzard, Raging Lulu, Reality Bores Me, and kaitou angel! _


	3. Chapter 3: Float

Touched

Chapter 03:

"Float"

* * *

Hiei was in the Makai when he felt the pull arching through one world and into another, blind and unseen hands groping for and finding his body an instant before his Jagan was able to force the push-pull out. Mukuro had about two seconds to realize that the fire apparition was no long walking at her side before turning, seeing the stricken look on his face, and opening her mouth to ask what the _hell_ he was so damn tense for. Hiei only got that look when he or someone he cared about was on the verge of dying, so she was, of course, a tad bit alarmed when she saw his eyes snap open wide and his lips all but disappear as he pressed them tight together.

"What's wrong?" she asked again, and his pupils dilated down to the size of gnats as he bared his teeth to speak.

Then the demon started to float.

Well, 'hover' at any rate; the abrupt action lacked the gentleness of the word 'float.' One second the soles of Hiei's boots were planted tight on the ground, and the next they _weren't_ by about, oh, half a meter by Mukuro's estimates. They were roughly equal in height at that point, Hiei's body as rigid as a rake as he stared into thin air like he was trying to light it on fire.

And perhaps he was. You could never be sure with Hiei.

Mukuro watched in morbid fascination as Hiei stayed in the air for a good minute and a half. He didn't twitch or flinch or speak; in fact, he didn't blink even once during the entire process. The only reasons why Mukuro knew he was conscious through the whole ordeal were because she could see his chest rising and falling like a runaway train—all carefully controlled jerks and twitches even as the actions spun faster and faster with every passing second—and the tension coiled in his muscular forearms as his fists clenched down by his black-clad thighs. Hiei was trying very hard to stay calm, still, and collected despite the raw fury burning in his scarlet eyes, but he couldn't fool Mukuro.

"Well shit," she said at last, and Hiei's eyes met hers.

"Don't say a word," he hissed, and just as abruptly as he had been picked up he was set down—and none too gently, too. His boots connected with the stone floor with a loud 'crack'; the demon stumbled for just a second before finding his balance and acting like he had never been off of it to begin with. Hands immediately moved from his sides and vanished into the depths of his pockets.

"Wanna talk about it?" Mukuro asked after a half-minute of awkward, not-looking-at-each-other silence.

Hiei turned and started walking down the hall.

"There's nothing to say," he said, and thought: _Not to _you_, at least._

* * *

Kurama was not so lucky. The company in which he found himself when _he_ floated was not as understanding as Mukuro.

When it happened, he was in the kitchen making limeade for his stepbrother, who sat in the living room playing a video game on the couch. Kurama had taken a break from the action to fix the drinks, and he was doing so with deliberate slowness because he was _not_ enjoying his time behind a PS3 controller as much as his mother had thought he would.

The whole thing had been her idea, of course. She was going on a weekend-long date (to the seashore, no less) with her 'new' husband of five years, leaving her eighteen year old stepson in charge of the house he'd lived in for the duration of that marriage. Only, neither of the parents had thought Little Shuichi quite trustworthy enough not to have a wild party in their absence (while the cat's away the mice will play, they say), so they had enlisted the twenty-three year old and much more responsible Shuichi-san to housesit.

"Think of it as… forced bonding," Kurama's mother had said when she asked him two weeks prior. "I know you've both grown up since I married Shuuichi-kun's father, and that the growing up took place apart from one another, _and_ that you're both different people now than you were when you first met, but I just wish you would still take time to be together. You are brothers, after all."

The human side of Kurama was still unable to resist his mother's doe-eyes, it seemed, which led him to spending two solid days and nights of playing videogames with Shuuichi-kun in the living room. Kurama had been more than happy to make drinks when Shuuichi complained of thirst, so long as he could rest his weary thumbs in the bargain.

He had not thought the bargain would also include flying lessons until it was much too late.

It felt, by Kurama's reckoning, like someone applied pressure just below his ribcage and pushed him _upward_ into the air. Besides that pressure—and the lack of solid ground beneath his linen house shoes—he experienced no other sensations, unpleasant or otherwise, and he was able to move enough to bend and set the limeade pitcher on the counter without spilling any of it.

"Oh my," he remarked when he straightened into a standing posture. Green eyes had opened wide with a mix of good-nature amusement and dangerous scrutiny. "I was not expecting this."

Shuuichi-kun, of course, chose that moment to enter the room, see the lack of support Kurama was experiencing, and say: "Are you done with the—Oh. Oh, oh…" He leveled a finger at his brother, grey eyes wide beneath his fringe of messy hair. "You're, you're—"

"Floating," Kurama remarked, and Shuuichi fainted dead away.

The force suspending Kurama in midair released him a moment later, and he touched down on the ground with all the grace he could muster—which wasn't much considering the circumstances, but was still more than Hiei had managed. His knees buckled and he leaned heavily on the counter for support, fingers clenching atop the pink tile in one cold swipe.

He regarded Shuuichi-kun's crumpled body through cool green eyes, wondering just how much Dreamflower pollen it would take to convince his stepbrother that his vision of a flying redhead had been nothing but a distant, distant dream.

* * *

Kuwabara was at home studying when it happened to him. He sat at the kotatsu—heater turned to the lowest setting because the cold September night outside was windy—with his math homework spread in a dizzying fan of charts, graphs, and calculation sheets across the table. A pencil balanced precariously behind his left ear as he punched numbers on a calculator with his thumbs, and Shizuru called from the kitchen: "You want marshmallows, too?"

Kuwabara rolled his eyes. "Um, duh? Who drinks cocoa without marshmallows?" He would have gone on to tell her that cookies were an essential cocoa-companion, as well, and that she needed to bring him some A-S-A-P, when all hell broke loose. The sheets and graphs and calculations went everywhere, a sudden snowstorm of misplaced paper and ink, when the kotatsu overturned from the force of Kuwabara's flying knees. He yelped as the pull at his midsection yanked him high into the air, feet and arms flying as he desperately tried to come back down to earth. He ended up kicking the heater exposed on the kotatsu's belly with his socked foot; the scent of singed cloth told him he had burned a hole on something, somewhere.

"Uh, sis?" he yodeled, still flailing and hoping that none of his worksheets had gotten immolated.

Her reply came like a cracking whip. "Look, I'm trying to find them, OK, but Dad must have hidden the stupid mar—"

"THIS IS NO TIME FOR MARSHMALLOWS, SHIZURU!"

Shizuru bolted into the room as fast as she could (which is to say she walked in at a leisurely pace, because Shizuru never did things as uncool as 'bolt'). The cigarette nearly fell out of her mouth when she saw her baby brother's midair ballet. He kept making these weird swimming motions, like he was going for a frog-stroke speed record or whatever, and he kept doing flips so hard that his face had gone green, but she recovered quickly enough and walked over to examine him.

"Quit that," she snapped, catching his ankle in one hand when he nearly round-housed her in the face. "You're gonna kill yourself."

"What's happening to me?" he yelled, flailing all the limbs Shizuru hadn't managed to grab hold of. His scared expression became a touch more hopeful when he looked at his older sister, the woman who had gotten him into one of the best highschools around despite his horrible middleschool career, and because of this Kuwabara was of the opinion that Shizuru was capable of just about anything. Hell, he'd even managed to get into one of the best colleges around with her tough love as encouragement; if there was anyone who could figure out Kuwabara's new "talent", the psychic thought, it was Shizuru.

Shizuru opened her mouth to shatter her brother's dreams—"Beats the shit out of me," would have been her words of choice—but then Kuwabara plummeted out of the air like a missile, collided with the ground, and proceeded to gasp for air like a beached fish. The wind had been knocked out of him.

"Well, baby bro," Shizuru said with a wry smile. Kuwabara looked into her eyes with shining, adorable expectation. "It looks to me like you just learned how to fly."

* * *

Yusuke, unlike the others, was not in the comfort of his home, his family, or people who would understand him when he floated. Of course he wasn't—who in their right mind would ever expect Urameshi Yusuke to have _good_ luck?

Yusuke, you see, was a work.

One of his late-Monday-night regulars had just sat down to order their usual beef teriyaki ramen bowl with a sigh, complaining of a sore back and how one of his fellow construction workers had mistakenly unloaded a truck full of I-beams on the wrong side of their worksite. Yusuke jokingly told the man to punch the offending party in the nuts as he shook the water out of a freshly boiled batch of noodles, and as he tipped the wire-mesh ladle into a bowl he felt himself get jerked off the ground with a gentle tap on his diaphragm.

Luckily, when he bought the ramen stand four years prior to the floating incident, he had picked one with a roof that was only a few inches taller than he was. He had picked it so he could still run his business during rainy weather, and though he had never anticipated the roof coming in handy _quite_ the way it did when he floated, he congratulated himself on his foresight nonetheless.

"You OK?" the regular asked when he looked up from his hands, which were folded atop the counter as he internally debated what to do about the careless employee. He had looked up because he heard Yusuke swear quite colorfully, and what he saw was more than a little weird: Yusuke had (in the construction worker's unknowing eyes) seemed to stand on his tiptoes so that his head was pressed tight to the ceiling, and from the eyeballs down his body was as tense and stiff as an uncooked ramen noodle. A single breath could break him, he was so tense.

"Oh no, I'm totally _fine_!" Yusuke gritted out from between clenched teeth. He was smiling a fake, cheesy grin so hard his cheeks had begun to hurt. Behind the counter, his feet twitched in the air as he sought out the ground that suddenly seemed much farther away than a mere four inches.

"You sure?" the construction worker asked, eyeing Yusuke as the boy chopped vegetables and poured broth with arms like a badly oiled robot's. A knife in the kid's stressed hands probably wasn't a good thing, come to think…

"Oh yeah!" Yusuke ground out, voice tight. "New type of yoga. Flex your body and hold it tight. Does wonders for the, uh, spleen."

"I'm sure," the worker agreed, and he bolted his food so fast Yusuke swore the man set a record. To his intense relief, the man paid without asking for change and ran off (he was, in truth, rightfully freaked out by the manic glint in Yusuke's eye and the pulse pounding in the youngster's bronzed temple).

As soon as he was gone, Yusuke put his hands to the ceiling and _pushed_, hard. "Oh c'mon!" he snapped, straining against the roof, but no matter how hard he pushed he could _not_ get his head away from the ceiling. "Why me? Why me all the time!"

He didn't use his full strength, of course, since that would likely result in the roof getting torn off and thrown halfway clear to France, but he most certainly did try to get down. Yusuke cursed and yelled and struggled, twisting in midair as he tried to shake himself loose, but no matter what he did he couldn't budge.

"My head's a magnet and the roof's one of those effing I-beams that guy kept yakking about!" he said, swearing up and down. "What the _hell_ is this _shit_!"

He was still pounding on the roof when the force let him go. He shot to the floor with an 'oomph' and landed hard on his knees, and when he recovered he stood, checked to make sure no one had seen him freak out like that, and began to paw through the red backpack heretofore hidden underneath the counter.

"C'mon, c'mon, just show up, dammit!" he muttered as he pawed through receipts, order forms, and spare clothes. "Just—"

The cellphone rang before he could locate it, but thankfully the chipper ringtone helped Yusuke find the object more quickly. Caller ID declared that 'Your Worst Nightmare' was waiting on the line.

"That's the last time I let _Kuwabara_ get a hold of my phone," he said, glaring at the stupid name, and then he flipped the device open and held it to his ear. "I'm assuming it's _you_, you big lug?"

"If by 'lug' you mean _me_, then yeah," came the sound of Kuwabara's scratchy voice. He sounded fidgety, wary, and calm all at once. "So what's up?"

Kuwabara's quasi-casual tone made Yusuke blanch. He had just _floated_, for Buddha's sake, and Kuwabara wanted to know what was _up_?

Well, then. That made the conversation that much easier, didn't it?

"_I'm_ up!" Yusuke snapped. "And before you read into it, no, I _don't_ mean that in a gay way, you sicko!"

"I—"

"I just fucking _levitated_!" Yusuke interjected. "Levitated! Last I checked, I don't know how to do that!"

Instead of snapping at him with an affronted rebuttal or a skeptical reprimand, Kuwabara went silent. He went silent for so long, in fact, that Yusuke would have suspected he had hung up if it weren't for the 'call in progress' banner scrolling across his phone's screen.

"You there?" he finally said. By then his voice had calmed down significantly, though he was by no means out of FreakOutLand just yet.

"Yeah," was Kuwabara's immediate response. "I'm here. And I floated, too."

Yusuke let that sink in (_Both of us? What the hell?_), and then he snorted. "'Levitate' sounds cooler, you dork."

Kuwabara: "Shut up." A pause, and then: "I think we should call Kurama."

"Call me back when you're done," Yusuke said, teasing despite the circumstances, and before Kuwabara could complain the ex-Spirit-Detective-turned-private-eye-slash-ramen-chef hung—

—the fuck

—up.

_Bang, baby. _

* * *

NOTES:

_Sorry for the multiple 'f word' droppage. I just feel like I can't write Yusuke without a certain degree of cursing, and... (*sheepish*) It just happened. And the third-person-omniscient-perspective-with-shifting-limitation was a real challenge to work with! I enjoyed it a lot!_

_Kaijin-san drew a FANTASTIC illustration of Hina using her powers on the clothes, so please go check it out. It really is awesome and I was NOT expecting to see Hina get drawn so early in this story's run, so it was a great surprise. GO SPOIL HER ROTTEN WITH COMMENTS, PLEASE! Link's on my profile. ^^_

_So I guess technically, this chapter and the last chapter happen at the same time, linearly speaking. _

_The next chapter is centered around Yusuke and the boys. Guess what happens!_

_THANK YOU SO MUCH, REVIEWERS! You are all awesome to give this fledgling story such kindness, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so nice to me even though I don't deserve it. DevilAngelWolf27, Reclun, Kaijin-san, LadyoftheGags, XxXTwilightSinXxX, Out-Of-Control-Authoress, Miyakomono, Zetsubel, AkaMizu-chan, itsallaboutbob, HeeHeeHee01, DoilyRox, SillyGoddessDisco, Mihakuu, Pirazz, loser94, etowa-ru, MissNayru, DragonDancer93, Dreamehz, Foxgirl Ray, Panda-chan31, chocolateluvr13, Montblanco, Willowleaf2560, Lizzie-Lizzard, Raging Lulu, Reality Bores Me, and kaitou angel! _


	4. Chapter 4: The Meeting

**NOTE: There's a blanket warning on Yusuke's foul mouth. **

* * *

Touched

Chapter 04:

"The Meeting"

* * *

Kuwabara called Kurama from his kitchen table, head in one hand and phone—on speaker so Shizuru could hear—in the other. The aforementioned elder sister stood by the kitchen's only window, idly blowing cigarette smoke out into the night air.

Kuwabara flinched a little every time the phone rang through his line's speaker. "He's not picking up," Kuwabara fretted, eyes glued to the table like he could read what to do in the wood's grain. "Maybe he's asleep; I would be if I didn't have that test on Wednesday, or maybe he's not at home—what if he was around people when he floated?" Narrow eyes bugged out of his skull. "Oh God, what if people saw—"

"Kurama's smart enough to handle that situation," Shizuru remarked with utter calm, exhaling a plume of white ash.

Her brother sighed, relieved to hear that reassurance. "You're right."

"He'd kill 'em all before they had a chance to scream," she continued with the same composure, and when Kuwabara looked up at her to gape she paused, cigarette hovering before her lips. "Or would that be _Hiei's_ reaction?" she mused.

"Definitely Hiei's," Kuwabara managed, somehow, and he groaned. "Thank god the shrimp's in Demon World."

Shizuru looked confused, then skeptical. "Still hanging out with Mukuro?" she asked. "I thought he was going to stay here, with—"

"Hiei had a debt to pay before he could settle in. At least, that's what Kurama said." He scratched the back of his neck. "You-know-who isn't taking it too well, what with Hiei running out without a word, but—"

The phone on the table proclaimed in Kurama's soothing tones: "Hello, this is Minamino Shuichi's mobile line. I am not available at the moment, but—"

Kuwabara pressed the 'end call' button and followed it up with a different number—this time to Kurama's mother's house.

"I'm calling all his numbers until he answers," Kuwabara said, looking at Shizuru as if daring her to challenge him, but she just shrugged.

"Whatever works," she said, and then someone picked up on Kurama's end.

Kuwabara jumped when he heard the call engage: "Hello?" he said, standing up so fast his chair's legs screamed across the tile floor before tipping over. "Hello, this is Kuwabara Kazuma—is Shuichi-san home?"

"Relax; it's me," said a smooth voice. Kuwabara's eyes widened a little in surprise. He had not been expecting Kurama himself to answer; really, Kuwabara had been gearing himself up to go through Shiori.

Thus, he only fumbled a little when it came his turn to speak. "My, uh, my cat's got earworms again," he said, glancing at Shizuru. She merely raised an eyebrow at the odd turn of conversation,

"No need for code at the moment," Kurama replied.

The 'cat's got earworms' line was a way for them to determine if they needed to be secretive on this phone line: if Kurama replied with a 'I have a remedy,' they were to arrange a meeting time away from whoever might be listening nearby.

"Your mom's not home?" Kuwabara asked, surprised. A total dismissal of the code meant, naturally, that the coast was clear, and Kuwabara hadn't been expecting that, either.

"On a trip, I'm afraid," Kurama said. "Although I suppose that could be considered lucky, come to think of it. I assume you're calling because you too had an… incident?"

Kuwabara sagged against his chair. "So it wasn't just me and Yusuke."

"Yusuke too, then?" A long pause. "I will contact Hiei as soon as possible, Perhaps this is an attack on all of us. Any word from Botan, or Genkai?"

"No."

"Then I'll get word to both of them as well, to see if they were affected," Kurama said. "Will you be near this number?"

"Yeah," said Kuwabara, glancing dubiously at the school books in front of him. "I'll be here all night."

"I'll call you once I find out more," Kurama said, and he hung up.

Kuwabara promptly dialed Yusuke.

* * *

I got a call from Kuwabara only a few minutes later, and he told me that what had happened to us had happened to Kurama, too. "Great, so we're _all_ being fucked with," I grumbled into the phone. "That's just fucking _perfect_."

Kuwabara sounded tired when he said: "Kurama's gonna call the shrimp and Genkai and Botan to see if they floated, too. Keep your cell on; I'll call you if I learn anything."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill," I said. Kuwabara started to say something else, but I hung up on him and tossed my phone into my backpack so hard that the screen cracked. "Oh, now isn't _that_ just awesome?" I griped as I stared at the silver line. I tugged off my baseball cap and pulled my hands through my hair. "This is not my night."

The sound of a stool rattling let me know I had a customer—goddammit, why the hell did they have to show up _now_? I quickly took a deep breath and put my cap back on so I could get back to work, but seriously, I was considering just telling them to get lost and closing up shop right there in their face because (I mean _seriously_!) I had just fucking floated and how the hell was I supposed to work after that?

_ You've gotta work because you've got bills to pay, stupid,_ I thought as I turned toward the customer. _Just shut up and do your job._

Even though she was the only one at my booth, it still took me, like, five whole seconds to figure out where my customer was, and she was definitely a weird one, that's for sure. She sat in the corner chair, the farthest one from me and the one most people don't take when all the others are open, because it's blocked from view by one of the posts holding up my booth's roof. I had to lean my head around the pole to catch her eye, and when I did she very quickly looked down at her hands—she was wearing black gloves even though it wasn't very cold, but whatever, it's not like I cared.

"Do you want something?" I asked. She looked up long enough for me to catch a glimpse of the dark liquid eyes hiding under her bangs. She mumbled something, but I didn't hear it so I cupped a hand around my ear and said: "Speak up!"

"T-two beef bowls t-to g-go, please," she managed to squeak. Her voice was soft, but nervous. I stared at her for a few seconds. I couldn't make out her expression because she hid her eyes under her sheepdog bangs—seriously, who the hell _does_ that? She was as shy as a—

"Comin' right up, Usagi-chan," I said, grinning because this girl needed to loosen up something fierce, but she just jumped a little and stared at me like I was crazy. It was obvious she hadn't gotten my joke of a nickname for her, so I explained: "I called you that 'cause you talk like a rabbit!"

For a moment she seemed stunned, eyes peeking out from between the strands of her bangs long enough for me to get a better look at her face. She was pretty, I guess, though with pride I compared her to Keiko and realized that my girlfriend was prettier. This girl had a pointed chin and an upturned nose, and I think her face was 'heart-shaped' or whatever (not like I really know, right?) and she had a smattering of freckles across her pale skin that made her look a bit like a country bumpkin. She had nice hair, though—long, loose, with really soft waves and curls—and her eyes were big and dark and her lashes looked pretty dang long.

_If she got rid of the bangs she'd probably look a lot nicer, _I decided. _But that attitude… ugh, I can't stand shy chicks!_

After a moment, the girl said "Rabbits can't talk" before remembering that she was timid, and she looked back down at the counter with a stumbling apology. Her eyes disappeared behind her straight bangs once again.

I snorted (_What a weirdo_, I thought) and I got busy making the food she'd requested. It didn't take me long to get it ready and packaged in lidded Styrofoam bowls, and as I tied the two bowls together with some brown string I asked the rabbit girl: "What's a kid like you doing out this late?"

Her shoulders tensed when I passed the bowls toward her; I noticed that her hands shook slightly when they took the food from me, her black gloves standing out against the pale skin of her uncovered forearm. The gloves didn't match the rest of her outfit, I didn't think, though I'm not the best judge of that or anything, but still, leather gloves with a pink skirt? Seems weird in my book.

"I'm… not a kid," she managed in her soft voice. "I'm in c-college."

"You sure are short for a college kid," I said before realizing that the words seemed rude, but to hell with it, I was stressed and she was making it pretty easy to make fun of her.

The girl seemed to shrink in on herself. Slowly, she slipped off of her stool and clutched the ramen to her chest, seeming to hesitate as she peeked out from under that stupid hair of hers.

"You'd seem older if you actually talked, you know," I advised.

This made her shrink into herself even further, and after that I didn't want to deal with my weird customer anymore (a customer I suspected that would never come back after I pretty much insulted her). I turned away and grabbed a washrag and started wiping down the counter, pointedly showing her my back in a 'go away' message that I hoped was pretty clear.

I have good ears, you know. Like, really good ears. They're not as good as Hiei's or whatever, but they're good, so I had a pretty decent sense of what was going on with the rabbit girl even though I couldn't see her with my back turned. I heard her draw in a breath, which she held for a few seconds before letting go, and then her feet scraped against the pavement and she was walking away.

I sighed, relieved to be alone again, but then her footsteps… well, they stopped. Another scrape on the pavement told me she had back turned around, so I turned, too, to see what was up.

The girl was looking at me. The minute our eyes met she ducked her head to hide her face, but I could see the blush on her cheeks even though I was, like, twenty feet away. When she started walking away again, she hurried like someone might be following her, feet taking short, quick steps that seemed ready to break into a sprint at any second.

"Weird," I said for the trillionth time.

"Indeed," said a voice.

Cursing, I spun to find—da da-da DA!—Kurama sitting on one of the stools. I hadn't felt him approach; the girl had been a bit distracting, I guess, but it still irked me that someone could get so close to me without my knowledge. I was a demon, dammit, and a strong one!

"Don't _do_ that!" I snapped at Kurama. I threw the dishtowel at him in agitation. "Seriously, _don't_!"

"Don't what?" he asked innocently. His eyes traveled to my head and glimmered with amusement. "I did not know you were a baseball fan, Yusuke."

I snatched the cap off my head and smoothed my hair back into place. "I'm not," I said. "It's a restaurant code. You gotta wear one t'make food." Something occurred to me. "And hey, how the hell did you get here so fast? I only talked to Kuwabara, like, ten minutes ago!"

Green eyes glittered. "That's my secret," said Kurama (damn the mysterious bastard—he's always saying stuff like that). While I glared at him, he looked over his shoulder; Usagi-chan had vanished from sight around the corner of the train station, behind which I'd parked my ramen stand. "A friend of yours?"

"Who, that girl?" I asked. I waved my ballcap at him. "Nah. Never seen her before."

Kurama's eyes narrowed; he looked over his shoulder again. I could feel the gentle cool-water tingle of his power flow out of him a second later. No doubt he was scoping out her aura. Kurama was really good at that—I'm crappy at it. Kuwabara's probably the best of our group, though.

"She lacks spiritual awareness," he said slowly as his power withdrew. Green eyes turned my way; I gave Kurama a skeptical look, and he shrugged. "It is better to be safe than sorry, Yusuke."

"I'm pretty sure that someone who can make all of us fucking _levitate_ wouldn't try to kill me at my _ramen stand_," I snipped. "And besides, did you _see her_? She's a freaking _bunny rabbit_!"

Kurama smiled politely, but I could tell he didn't see the humor in it the way I did. He asked in all seriousness: "Who else did you see tonight?"

"Just my usual crowd of regulars," I said, but then I actually thought about it and frowned. "Well, all of them and probably about a dozen or so new people, too, so… fifty people, maybe?"

Kurama did not look happy about that. That made me worried. In the spirit of not finding out that I had done something that would end up killing me, I asked: "Why? Is it important?"

"Perhaps," Kurama said.

When he didn't tell me more, I said: "How do you figure?"

For a moment, Kurama looked like he wasn't going to tell me, but I gave him my best 'I swear to God I'll kick your ass' look and he caved.

"Have you ever heard of voodoo, Yusuke?" he asked. When I raised my eyebrows (because hell yes, I'd heard of voodoo, and hell no, I didn't believe it existed) Kurama held up a hand to keep me from laughing in his face, or something. "I have never heard of it being put into working practice, but tonight's events seem to stink of something similar to voodoo's ability to affect a person from an immense distance."

I thought about that for a moment, and then I decided I'd just go along with it. Kurama's way smarter than me anyway; what's the point of arguing?

"A spiritual technique similar to voodoo is only a theory on my part, and it is an insubstantial one, at that," he went on, "but it is the only one I have at this point. Given my admittedly limited knowledge of voodoo, it would seem logical that the one who made us float must possess something personal of ours to use as a conduit to accessing and manipulating our energy stores, and, by extension, or physical bodies. That being the case, someone must have made contact with us and taken something of ours."

"And you think they got something from each of us _tonight_?" I asked, not buying it. "I think we all would have noticed if we'd been robbed at the same time."

"They could have taken a hair or a nail clipping," Kurama suggested.

"Yeah, I don't usually let people give me makeovers at work," I said, rolling my eyes.

This time, Kurama actually _did_ smile. "You make an excellent point, Yusuke. Given that I have only had contact with my brother for the past two days, and given that Kuwabara has been having a studying marathon with his sister, it makes sense that tonight was not when we were visited by our aggressors. Hiei, likewise, was with Mukuro, and very few others got close enough to him to take something."

"So you got a hold of Hiei?" I asked in surprise. "How's the shrimp doing? I haven't heard from him since he left."

Kurama's eyes turned very careful at that—I knew why, too, and I knew he probably didn't want to talk about the sore subject that was Hiei leaving Human World despite what he had to live for in it, but whatever, Hiei's a jerk and there's not much else to say about that.

"Hiei has been doing well," Kurama said, picking his words one by one. "He levitated as well, in much the same manner as us."

"And Mukuro?" I asked. "Did she levitate, too?"

Kurama shook his head.

"Well, that's something," I said. "Genkai?"

"Neither she nor Botan were affected," he said. "Likewise, Yukina and Koenma were not a part of the… festivities."

My stomach clenched into a knot—huh. I wasn't used to being nervous. "So it's just the four of us," I muttered, and when I met Kurama's eyes I saw that he looked nervous, too. "Well this is just great, now isn't it?"

"I would hardly call it 'great', Yusuke," Kurama said, but I just shot him a grin and tried not to let my worry show.

* * *

It was only after I closed up for the night—with promises to Kurama that we'd all meet up to talk about the Mysterious Voodoo Douchebag Dude at some point—that I realized I had forgotten to make Usagi-chan, the weird rabbit-quiet weirdo from earlier, pay me for her ramen.

* * *

NOTES:

_Guess who Usagi-chan was!_

_ I juggled around the order of the previous chapters. Their order makes more sense now. Basically, if you didn't already pick up on it, the boys floated when Hina picked them all up and put them in her drawer, when her mother came in to tell her to go get food. So, chapters 2, 3, and 4 all happened on the same night. Just thought I'd clarify that in case there was confusion. _

_Next chapter is from Hina's POV. Also, my thoughts on her appearance changed just a little bit—I added bangs, because upon reflection I realized that she's the type to hide behind her hair and bangs are handy for that. Just a small detail, but… eh. _

_ There were a few references to one of my other works, Future Talk, in this chapter, and just so you know, NONE OF THEM CAN BE CONSIDERED SPOILERS. Rest easy._

_I decided that it was weird to write my OC in the first person, but not to write Yusuke in the first person. From now on, Yusuke and Hina will be in first (they're the main characters, after all) and all others will be in third if I find that they need to have a scene in which Yusuke is not present. My choice to write Yusuke in the first person is also going to help me (probably) learn to write him better, since I have to spend inordinate amounts of time in his head. Hopefully, anyway. Eek. Let me just give a blanket warning that Yusuke's mouth will always be foul._

_ Sorry the chapter was rather short, but I figured this needed to be updated so I just hauled off and wrote something. Many thanks to all you lovely readers out there; you ROCK MY SOCKS OFF. Australia, Out-Of-Control-Authoress, AkaMizu-chan, airpwane, OceanSyren, DaAmazingMeepers, DoilyRox, TallyYoungblood, , HeeHeeHee01, kaitou angel, chocolateluvr13, -individuality-has-a-name-me-, Kaijin-san, Panda-chan31, ForbiddenRyuu, Reclun, SomebodyStandingThere, Bi Gay Straight Who Cares, Mihakuu, DevilAngelWolf27, OhhTaylorJade, loser94, heve-chan, Lizzie-Lizzard, Alli, Katt Jeane, WillowLeaf2560, eragon1228, moani-sama, LadyxAbsinthe, yonet-chan, LifelessCollegeGirl, KayTeeCee! _


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